


Wish Upon a Red Star

by Daxolotl



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, New Year's Eve, Trans Female Character, Wishes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 18:30:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17188157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daxolotl/pseuds/Daxolotl
Summary: Alex Danvers has never believed in New Year’s Resolutions.She makes wishes, instead.





	Wish Upon a Red Star

Alex Danvers has never liked the idea of New Year’s Resolutions. Why waste time promising to be better once a year when you could just make the changes you want to make in your life when you want to make them?

She never believed in them. 

But one New Year’s Eve night, when she’s six, Jeremiah takes her out into the garden to look through a telescope, to show her the stars. There’s one in particular he points her towards.

"See that faint red one?" he asks, voice gentle next to her, breath warming up her cold ears. "That’s Rao. That’s the star Superman comes from."

She gasps, eyes wide, as she takes in the faint red blob in front of her, so far away.

"Make a wish, Alex," he says. 

And so she does. A New Year’s Resolution was only as strong as the person resolving to do something. But a wish? A wish could be strong. A wish might come true all on its own. Especially with the power of Superman behind it. That night, she wishes to find a new friend. 

That summer, when she’s seven, she visits Nagano with her parents. She meets a girl there. A wonderful, kind girl who doesn’t laugh at her clumsy attempts at Japanese. One night when she’s homesick, she leaves a wish in a wall. She wishes for another friend like the girl from Nagano. But it’s not a New Year’s wish, so she doesn’t put much stock in it, even as Rao glimmers faintly overhead. 

She meets Josie later, at her eighth birthday party. Alex offers her cake, and Josie offers to let her sit with the rest of her friends. By the time she meets the girl, the wish in Nagano feels like a tingling memory, more pinky swears and rhymes than something she remembers writing. By the time they’re best friends, she’s forgotten all about what she wrote down. 

She doesn’t wish for much over the next few years. But when she’s ten years old, in the middle of the night, as she hears fireworks going off outside, she rolls over to face her window. Behind the flashes of fireworks and the smoke curling in the air, she spots the piece of sky where she knows Rao is hiding, invisible to the naked eye, and she makes a single, fervent wish. 

 

She wishes she was a girl. 

 

A month later, she hears the word "transgender" for the first time, and everything starts to make sense.

Telling her parents is the most terrifying moment of her life. Telling them that something feels wrong – that the way she is isn’t _correct_ , and that she wants to change.

When Eliza steps forwards to hug her, she finally breaks down crying, her pain overwhelming her.

The day her hormone blockers arrive, she looks up at the sky and simply whispers "Thank you" to the star she hopes is listening. 

Her life improves, a lot. She doesn’t feel much need for wishes. 

Her next wish doesn’t come until she’s thirteen years old, in fact, standing with her parents at a New Year’s party, a (small) glass of champagne in her hands. Clark and his new girlfriend Lois are there, along with the Kents and a number of her parents’ friends from work. As the countdown reaches zero and 2003 begins, as the people around her come together and kiss to ring in the New Year, she closes her eyes and wishes she’ll never spend a New Year alone.

Then a girl falls from the sky. And Jeremiah is gone. 

She doesn’t wish after that.

After all, her dad is gone. No amount of wishing would bring him back, right? What would be the point?

The next time she wishes, it’s an accident. She’s drunk, coming down from a high, failing her classes, and collapsed on her sofa. As her body shakes and shudders, as she tastes bile and whiskey and brightly-colored shots on her tongue, it hits her how pointless it all is. How pathetic she is. 

 

She wishes she was dead. 

 

Two nights later, almost as drunk (but, mercifully, not high), she’s arrested for drink driving.

She’s put in lockup overnight, her head pounding and the cold concrete she has it resting against offering no real relief, when Hank Henshaw marches in. When he says things about her that no living soul should know. When he offers to save her life. 

The DEO gives her purpose. She hates lying to Kara, loathes it, but the job? The job is everything she dreamed of. She makes a difference. Does research she could never have done with her failing grades. And becomes a certifiable badass.

She spends every New Year with Kara, the two of them curled up with eggnog, watching the fireworks and giggling at whatever's on TV. There’s no need for wishes or anything else. They have each other. 

She loves the job, and she loves her sister, and that's all she needs.

Until, at 26 years old, someone tries to blow up her plane.

That part, she doesn’t love.

As her plane, engine aflame, circles and loses altitude, Alex looks out of the window for the briefest of moments, and realises with the direction they’re facing, with the time it is, she’s looking towards Rao. 

She doesn’t wish to survive. She knows their odds of survival, and wishing won’t change them. She’s a realist. She knows that with the skyline of National City being what it is, the best they can hope for is to shear off their wings in the side of a building and crash in the street. Worst-case scenario, they'll end up taking out the top floors of the CatCo building. 

 

She just wishes she could see Kara one last time.

 

When the plane levels out a few minutes later, when she peers out to see Kara under the wing, lifting them all, she’s torn between laughing and crying. Because there she is. Just like Alex asked. Saving her. 

Revealing herself to the world. 

Kara makes a lot of friends over the next two months. 

And so, instead of New Year being something shared just between the two of them, there’s suddenly more. She’s being invited out to a party at James’s apartment, and she’s reluctantly accepting. The alternative would be spending it alone, after all.

And so, she watches them from the balcony, standing outside and looking at Kara’s friends through the window. Enjoying the temporary reprieve from socialisation. 

James is nice enough, even if he’s a little too flirtatious with Kara when she’s heard his situation with Lucy was far from resolved. Winn’s still obviously in love with Kara, which Alex snorts at as she sips on her champagne.

Her eyes catch Kara’s through the glass as the fizzy drink hits her tongue, and she wishes she was back home.

But that would be too easy.

"So, uh, Alex. What’s your New Year’s Resolution?" James asks conversationally, as he sidles out on to the balcony.

She tenses, just a little. "I don’t do Resolutions."

"Oh". He looks disappointed, and Alex notices a sharp look being directed at her from Kara, a mouthed ‘be nice!’ before Kara seamlessly rejoins the conversation with Lucy and Winn. 

Damn it. 

"But I suppose that might change. What about you?"

James nods, slowly. "I wanna push myself to be better. I’m glad I moved to CatCo, but I still feel like I could be doing more, y’know?"

"No," Alex says. 

James looks disappointed again. 

A few seconds later, Kara is joining them, handing both Alex and James another glass of champagne.

"Oh, are you trying to get her to do Resolutions? Trust me, she doesn’t do them. It’s this whole Thing. She’s morally opposed."

Kara’s arm wraps around her waist comfortingly and Alex melts, her tension and coldness towards James almost vanishing.

"I can make a Resolution if I want to!" she argues. "I don’t have anything against them, I just think they’re dumb."

James laughs a little, taking a sip of his champagne, and Alex leans closer towards Kara, finding comfort in the familiarity of that, even if the rest is strange and new.

"Oh yeah?" Kara challenges, grinning. "Make a Resolution, then."

Alex scowls. "Rude."

"You love it."

James grins at the two of them, clearly amused, and Alex flounders for something to resolve. 

"Fine. Uh. I..." what can she even resolve to do? Her eyes flick up at the sky, towards Rao for the briefest of moments. 

 

"...I resolve to try something new."

 

"Oh, very daring, Doctor Danvers," Kara snarks, and nuzzles her neck.

Alex laughs and pokes her in the side, and starts to feel like the night won’t be too bad after all – not when she has Kara with her.

She’s forgotten her resolution ten months later, when the President is attacked. When she meet Detective Maggie Sawyer. She’s forgotten it when they talk, when she realises that she likes Maggie. When she comes out to Kara. When she kisses Maggie.

She doesn’t remember it until New Year’s rolls around again. She and Maggie have been together for a few weeks, and they’re taking things slowly. She’s spending the night with Kara – she might have a girlfriend now, but she’s not about to abandon their traditions or Kara.

They’re on their third glass of eggnog each when Kara starts laughing.

"What? What’s funny?"

Kara’s giggling and snorting. "Remember last year? James’s party? We asked you to make a Resolution."

Alex’s mouth falls open. "And I said I’d try something new."

Kara’s giggling intensifies. "You really went above and beyond with your first Resolution, Allie!"

Alex laughs with her, and throws a pillow at Kara’s face.

"...so what’s your Resolution this year?" Kara asks, mouth full of pillow. 

Alex shrugs. "I’m still not one for Resolutions," she begins. Then says something she’s never told anyone else before. "I’m more one for wishes."

Kara stops, eggnog halfway to her lips. She’s listening.

"When I was little, Jeremiah took me out stargazing. And one New Year’s Eve, he took me out, and showed me this little red star through his telescope. He said it was Rao. And he told me to make a wish. It’s stupid, but I always liked it."

Kara smiles, softly, encouragingly. "You pray to Rao?"

Alex flushes bright red, rubbing the back of her neck. "I, uh. I guess I do, yeah."

Kara seems to make a snap decision.

She jumps to her feet, swaying a little from the alien rum they’d managed to put in the eggnog this year. She reaches the balcony and opens it wide, letting in the chill December California air, and holds her hand out towards Alex.

Alex stares, a bemused smile on her face. "What?"

"Do you trust me?"

Is that even a question? 

"...Always."

She gets to her feet, clasping her hand in Kara’s, and a moment later she’s in Kara’s arms, three hundred feet in the air.

"Kara!" she yelps, incredulous. "Someone might see!"

Kara just grins and kisses Alex’s cheek as she lifts them further and further, until the air becomes cold enough for Alex to snuggle closer against her chest to keep warm. 

"Look up at the sky," she says, softly.

She looks up, and gasps.

They’re above the light pollution here, and the sky is clear, like it is in Midvale. Nothing like National City from the ground.

"Kara..." Alex says, voice cracking.

"Make a wish, Allie."

 

Alex looks up at the sky. And she wishes her dad could see her now. Could see the woman she is today.

 

Kara kisses her cheek again, and floats them gently through the sky as the fireworks start going off far beneath them.

And Alex thinks this might be the happiest she can remember being.

Less than three months later, they save Jeremiah.

It’s everything Alex has dreamed of for almost half her life. And then, just as quickly, it’s every nightmare she’s ever had.

And she decides to never wish again. It only brings pain to her.

She gets engaged, and she doesn't wish for anything.

She breaks the engagement off, and she still doesn't wish for anything – doesn't wish she and Maggie could have figured it out, or for a family.

She drinks, and drinks, and self destructs in a way she hasn’t in almost ten years. But she still doesn't wish for anything.

And her lack of wishing feels like the perfect decision. 

Right up until Reign arrives. 

Right up until she beats Kara into a coma.

Come Christmas Day, she’s still unconscious. Still broken. Still powerless. 

 

On the 31st of December, at 11:58pm, Alex breaks down weeping by Kara’s bed.

"Please. Please. Rao? Rao, if you’re listening. Please bring her back. I can’t do this without her." She lifts Kara’s hand to her lips and kisses the back of it. "I need her. I need her more than anything else in the world."

"Just bring her back to me. Please."

 

Kara wakes up a few days later.

She wakes up, and beats Reign, and is just as fantastic as Alex knows she is. She saves the world.

And then it all goes to hell all over again.

The President is exposed. The Children of Liberty grow from a fringe movement to a political power. And the new president tries to force Kara to reveal herself to the world.

Kara saves all their lives, and they vilify her. 

Alex feels sick to her stomach at it all.

But, the world going to hell still can't stop a Danvers tradition.

New Year’s Eve brings them together again. Neither of them comatose, this time. Kara is curled up against Alex’s side, half-drunk and giggly despite the drama and pain they’ve both felt so recently.

Alex looks down at her, smiling brightly and stroking her fingers through her hair.

"What will your New Year’s wish be this year?" Kara asks, during a lull in the TV.

She freezes, at that.

"...I wish..."

Where does she even begin? What can she possibly wish for that would be enough? 

"I wish that the rest of the world saw you the way I do."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"And..." There’s a moment of pause, and Kara’s grin turns coy. "How exactly do you see me?"

Alex flushes, heart rate spiking. "As…" How does she even answer that? "...the most perfect being I’ve ever known."

Kara's blushing, just a little. "Well. I’m not sure if I quite want _everyone_ to see me that way."

Is she moving closer? It feels like she’s closer. 

"I think _you_ seeing me like that is all I could ever want."

"I always have," she says, and it's the gentlest truth she can give.

 

"Make a wish," Kara whispers, and kisses her. 

 

And after twenty years, Alex feels like her wishes might all be coming true


End file.
